Electronic music and shamanism: contemporary techniques of ecstasy

Author(s)

Pedro Peixoto Ferreira

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2006-02-10

Examining board members

Laymert Garcia dos Santos; Eduardo Viveiros de Castro; Marcio Goldman; Mauro William Barbosa de Almeida; Vanessa Lea

• Advisor: Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Abstract

We began with an analysis of the relations between electronic dance music and shamanism as found in a so called native discourse, and discovered that they concern mainly the experience of trance produced by the immersion in an intense, repetitive and technical sonic environment. Then, we did a bibliographical research about indigenous shamanism and about its relations with modern technology which revealed not only the intimate relations between shamanism and technology but also a tendency of traditional shamanism to beco me technologically distributed in contexts of contact among Indians and Whites. At last, we proposed an interpretation of electronic dance music as the sound of a machine and of its shamanism as the use of this machine by the DI and his audience in the production of machinic trance states. We also sketched the main lines of a methodology for the verification of this proposal in future researches. This research is part of a bigger effort to investigate the unconscious machinisms which make work the contemporary capitalist machine (AU)